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Adaptable across the repertoire, Hamelin displays his Mozart affinity with Orpheus

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Marc-Andre Hamelin doesn't impose his personality on a variety of music so as to build a cult following. Unlike old Hollywood stars, who molded each role onto their public personalities and built their careers on offering the best new version of their marketed presentation, like John Wayne or Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn.  But a personality need not be irrelevant or a distraction if the effort to probe deeply into a composer is sustained: the composer is revealed along with the individuality of the performer, and Hamelin does that to the level of wizardry. Thus a Debussy prelude as an encore has a veiled charm that the pianist seemed to view from the inside out, as though inhabiting the colorations and the linked, unsquare phrasing characteristic of the French composer. The demand to hear more, enthusiastically generated by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with whom he came to Carmel Saturday night, shed that kind of light. Marc-Andre Hamelin played Mozart with inside know...
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Collaboration on another classic: Indianapolis Ballet, ISO join forces for 'The Sleeping Beauty'

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One of many good things said to come in threes (so far) is the collaboration between the Indianapolis Symphony   Orchestra and Indianapolis Ballet. The fairy-tale formula of the threefold charm fits perfectly with the current production of "The Sleeping Beauty." The Petipa-Tchaikovsky masterpiece tops all stage and screen versions of Charles Perrault's beloved fairy tale. In the first of three performancees Friday night in Clowes Hall, the guiding force was the company's interim director, Michael Vernon, succeeding the inspired founding director Victoria Lyras, who retired late last year. The production looked splendid, sets and costumes alike, especially in the first scene, The Christening, in which the traditional rite for infants at society's highest level is at the peak of splendor. Yoshiko Kamikusa danced the Rose Adagio on opening night. But of course, an error of royal etiquette, the seneschal Catalabutte's failure to invite the wicked fairy Carabosse,...
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Music director's outstanding February run ends with 'Scotch snap'

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 George Bernard Shaw, one of a small handful of readable music critics of stature, once called  Mendelssohn's Symphony no. 3 in A minor "a work which would be great if it were not so confoundedly genteel."  A champion of blood-and-thunder Verdi and the spiritually titanic Wagner, Shaw maybe made such an assessment on the basis of undernourished performances he'd heard of the work nicknamed "Scottish" or "Scotch." The latter word is no longer applied respectably to anything much besides the venerated distilled whiskey from Scotland. In an essay on the composition, the beverage's distinctive flavor encouraged Michael Steinberg, one of the commentators on the "Scottish" symphony, to describe the dark coloration of its first movement as "peaty."  James Ehnes always makes a strong impression here.  Water over the region's peat beds lends the beverage its character — and by extension the kind of orchestration with which the ...
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Across a cliché divide: Hansen and Walters string quartets at Jazz Kitchen

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Walking into a packed Jazz Kitchen on a Sunday afternoon to hear a couple of string quartets, I can't Gary Walters and Peter Hansen had a matinee showcase. avoid recalling the old Monty Python introduction: "And now for something completely different." So it was, although the featured composers— Gary Walters and Peter Hansen — have distinguished records as creative and performing artists there, notably together in the early part of the century as members of the Icarus Ensemble. Formerly a contrabass player in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Hansen invited four current members to perform his String Quartet No. 1 in E and Walters' "Bluesberry Jam." Besides its interlocking, punning title, Walters' piece, enjoying its first public performance, showed his high comfort level across several genres. Retired from the jazz faculty of Butler University, Walters keeps his composing and playing schedule judiciously crowded. "Bluesberry Jam," a de...
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A hero's journey: Märkl puts his stamp (and ours) on 'Eroica'

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Programming concerts involves giving shape to a season, not just to individual concerts. As  music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for the past 17 months, Jun M ä rkl has displayed both kinds of skill. He is advancing the orchestra as well as its Classical Series patronage. In his current spate of Hilbert Circle Theatre podium appearances, he is exploring thematic compatibility as well as idealism, technical polish and expressive breadth. Next week he and the orchestra will take us to the Scottish Highlands; other kinds of summitry have been on view this weekend and last. The extraordinary demands of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony gave an extra wow to Valentine's weekend. How do you avoid a feeling of letdown after that? He couldn't have done better than doubling down on Mahler's identity as "the song-symphonist" with songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn , then crowning that exploration with a Beethoven milestone, Symphony No. 3 in E-...
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Reinforcement of cultural diversity: joint recital by two prize-winners

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  Sirena Huang and Drew Petersen play Gabriela Lena Frank.  Drew Petersen and Sirena Huang made sure the rare opportunity for a musical reunion would be readily appreciated by a near-capacity audience Thursday evening at Indiana Landmarks Center. The pianist and the violinist, well-acquainted since they were students at the Juilliard School, opened their joint recital with a work they had studied at the New York City institution together: Beethoven's Violin Sonata no. 5 in F, op. 24 ("Spring").  The arrangement by which they could perform as a duo as young professionals was engineered by the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and the American Piano Awards . Each organization holds their achievement at the highest level as competition winners in 2017 (Petersen) and 2022 (Huang). Apart from the Beethoven work and their encore (Sarasate's "Zapateado"), the national significance of 2026 strongly suggested their program have an American cast. And s...
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ISO packs house with a symphonic 'return to forever'

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 Can you overdo it with a piece that challenges you to cheer and cry at the same time?  Music-lovers have Gustav Mahler at 5, wondering if life is worth it.  to answer that question for themselves, but the concert experience of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in D minor ("Resurrection") for me works out best with years in between in-person iterations.  My first exposure to joining a big crowd for such a performance was in May 1987, when John Nelson capped off his 11-year tenure as Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra music director with an interpretation that explictly spoke to his  religious orientation: "The sentiments that are in the text are my sentiments," he told the Circle Theatre audience. Certainly the second time I heard "Resurrection" almost effected a match between my sentiments and those of the texts the composer chose — from the folk poetry of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and "Resurrection," an ode by Friedrich Klopstock — plus a huge sup...
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